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By Al Zdon
The first thing you should know about gliders, the "silent wings" of World War II, is that they aren't silent.
From a distance, a glider swooping in for a
landing in a farmer's field behind enemy lines might have looked like an object of quiet beauty. Inside, it was deafening.
"I don't know if it was the wind, or maybe the prop wash, but you couldn't
hear anything in there. You had to yell at the guy next to you," said Ray Nagell, a glider crewman in the 101st Airborne.
Nagell served in the invasion of Normandy, Operation Market Garden, Battle of
the Bulge and other operations during the war, and wants you to know one other thing about gliders:
"I thought they were fun. I really enjoyed them."
Nagell, the third oldest of nine kids, grew up
in Minneapolis and graduated from West High School before going to work in the St. Paul Machine Shop. After Pearl Harbor, he was in no rush to run down and enlist.
"My dad was in the First World War
and he told my how they gassed people, and about the rain and the mud and the horrible conditions over there. So I wasn't too enthused about joining the Army."
In December 1942, a year after the war
started, Nagell got his greetings from the President of the United States. He reported to Fort Snelling for his physical, and a few weeks later he was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Nagell is often
asked if he volunteered for glider duty, considered by many parachute soldiers as more dangerous that jumping out of airplanes. "I didn't volunteer for anything in the Army. They just told me I'd be part
of the Air Force. They didn't say I'd be attached to the Air Force by a tow rope."
Because his group was late arriving in a cycle of training, Nagell only got five weeks of basic training instead of
the usual 13 or so. "I didn't even know the manual of arms. I was guarding a gate one time and a general came up and I kind of raised my rifle in a salute. He said, 'Let me see that again,' so I did it
again. He said, 'Thank you, very much.'"
Minutes later, Nagell was relieved of duty at the gate. Not long after, the entire battalion was ordered to undergo remedial manual of arms training.
Nagell
admits his first ride in a glider was a little scary. "I looked out the window and the wings were flapping up and down. I thought they were loose and about to break off, but then I found out that's how
they're supposed to be. After that I found it interesting."
The inside of a glider, he said, was pure functionality. "It was just bare tubing with a covering over the outside. Six of us would sit on
one side and seven on the other and one would sit up in the co-pilot's seat."
Nagell trained as a "sighter" on a 75 mm howitzer, a small artillery piece that could be carried in the glider. Nagell
aimed the gun, sometimes at a target that was out of sight in the distance using coordinates from a forward observer.
Part of the training was how to tie down a field artillery piece or a Jeep, using
special knots, so that it would be secure during the flight, but quickly removable from the glider after landing.
The battalion was sent overseas in a convoy in July 1943. Nagell was up on deck one
foggy night. "We were zig-zagging every five minutes or so to avoid the torpedoes, but one of the ships zigged when he should have zagged. This big, gray old ship came right out of the fog. It takes
about 10 minutes to turn one of those things, and we turned one way and the other ship turned the other way, but it was close. We missed each other by about 50 feet."
The men were stationed near
Oxford, and had some time to explore the university town and London during breaks in their training. "Sometimes we'd just go to the local pub and buy the old guys beers. They really liked that, and it
was no big deal for us, maybe a nickel a beer."
One problem the glider men had was that their brothers, the paratroopers of the 101st, were getting flight pay for their hazardous work. The glider
soldiers got nothing at first, not even the jump wings.
"Things changed when we got to England. They found out pretty quickly, after D-Day, that glider duty was pretty dangerous, even compared with
the parachute guys. So we started getting flight pay, and we got our wings."
Other changes were inside the glider. "They decided we didn't need parachutes anymore, so they were gone. And they said we
didn't need a copilot anymore, and so they just put a soldier in the co-pilot's seat. They asked us if we wanted to learn to fly the glider in case the pilot got killed on the way in.
"I learned how
to fly it, and it was great. It's all plexiglass up there so it doesn't even feel like you're in a glider.
"And I wasn't in awe of the pilots anymore. It took us about four hours to learn how to fly
it."
The relations between the paratroopers and the glider troopers were not always cordial, but Nagell said he avoided any confrontations. "I heard of one incident in Southhampton where some men of
the 907th paratroopers and some glider soldiers mixed it up. First the knives came out, and then later they had guns. I think we lost a few guys on that one."
The first action for glider troops
was on D-Day plus one when they were brought over the channel in ships rather than by air. "There were just too many poles that the Germans put up in the fields. There was no way for the gliders to
land."
The unit Nagell was in was to go ashore on the troop carrier USS Susan B. Anthony, but the ship hit a mine heading in and began to sink.
"The American ships just kept going back and forth,
but nobody would stop to help us. Finally three British ships came to rescue us. By that time, we were listing pretty good. And there were 14-foot waves.
"Aboard the British ship, we were having
coffee and crumpets when they ordered us on board the LSI's (land ship-infantry). On our way in, though, we could see another huge mine, and they sent for the mine sweepers. But in those huge waves, the
mine sweeper got tangled with the mine and it blew up. I think everyone was killed."
As it neared shore, the men jumped out of the LSI and found themselves neck-deep in sea water. "All we brought in
were our rifles and ammo, not even extra clothes to change into."
Nagell's platoon captured a pill box by using a flame thrower, and the men were able to find food stored away inside.
At the town
of Carentan, the unit, now reunited with its artillery piece, was ordered to take out a tank they could see near the town. "We fired one white phosphorus smoke shell to mark the position, but a P-51
flying overhead saw the smoke and dropped a bomb on the tank. The bomb knocked a track off the tank, and it just went around and around in the field."
After 30 days of pushing the Germans back through
Normandy and the Cherbourg Penninsula, the glider soldiers were brought back to England to wait for their next mission.
Operation Market Garden, an Allied operation mainly run by the British, was
an attempt to seize a series of bridges in Holland so the Allies could make an end run into Germany and end the war quickly.
For Nagell, it was his only chance to do a glider landing during a combat
operation in the war.
The troops were ready to go at 7:30 a.m., but the fog was so thick the attack of the 60 gliders was postponed. "They gave us a huge, delicious breakfast – very unusual for
the Army. It was kind of like our last meal."
The gliders were not airborne until 11 that morning, even though the airport was completely socked in. "I don't know how the pilot of the C-47 could see.
I heard that one pilot watched the edge of the runway while the copilot watched the speed."
There is no slack in the rope, and as soon as the C-47 gets moving, the two gliders hooked to it begin to
move too. By the time the tow plane has gone just a little ways down the runway, the gliders are already aloft.
In the fog and clouds, trying to fly in formation was a nearly impossible task. "One of
the gliders being towed by another plane went underneath our C-47, and was pulling our rope to the right. Our ropes were actually crossed."
Nagell said the glider pilot has an option at that point of
dropping the rope and gliding down for a landing, but at that particular moment the airships were over the English Channel.
"Finally, the two C-47s spotted each other and moved away in the right
direction." The tow ropes became untangled.
About 20 minutes later, the pilot of the C-47 towing the glider Nagell was in suddenly saw he was about to crash into a glider in front of him. The pilot
dropped his flaps and slowed his plane down dramatically.
This had an interesting result with the gliders he was towing. "We just caught up and passed him. We looked down at them, and they were
looking up at us. We just missed the tail. If we'd hit it, one or both of us would have gone down."
The tow pilot had had enough excitement by this point and revved his engine and simply left the
formation.
"When we finally came out of the fog, we were the only ones in the sky. But the C-47 pilot could see the formation way ahead of us, so he speeded up to about 150 miles an hour, about as
fast as he could go. The glider was shaking and vibrating so much, we thought it would just fall apart.
"Then when we did catch up with the formation, the ack-ack started. The C-47s ducked down low to
avoid it, but the tow plane on our left went so low that the propeller was cutting the branches off the trees."
"We could look down and see the German soldiers shooting at us. We wished we could have
dropped some hand grenades on them."
The C-47 was at about 500 feet when it released the gliders. The image of a glider gracefully soaring in for landing isn't quite accurate either, Nagell said. "It
only takes about 15 seconds to get down. They drop pretty fast."
A glider weighs about 3,700 lbs. empty and twice that when it's loaded with troops or equipment.
The landing area in Holland, near
Zon, was a potato field. "Sixty gliders is probably too many for one potato field," Nagell said. For his glider, it was just about a disaster.
"There were a lot of crashes. Our pilot saw that we
couldn't clear a drainage ditch and so he put our wing down right on top of the wing of another glider. We bumped him a little bit, but we stopped.
"Once the glider stopped, we got the hell out of
there in a hurry because the Germans were shooting at us." The men had to untie their howitzer and drag it out of the glider.
The next 69 days were dedicated to holding onto the roads, elevated above
the below-sea-level farmland.
Nagell had his worst injury of the war in Holland when he tried to jump a hedgerow and some barbed wire. "We were attacked by mortars. The guy next to me had his arm
just torn off. When I hit that wire, it just ripped me all the way down and I was bleeding pretty good. As I ran away, my pants were just flapping behind me."
His comrades suggested that he put in for
a Purple Heart, but he spurned the idea. "Purple Hearts were for guys who got killed, I thought. But, you know, later on when the war was over, and I was trying to get out of the Army, I had 69 points
and you needed 70 to get out. If I'd got that Purple Heart I would have had enough."
Near the end of the operation, which was a failure when the British were unable to take and hold the furthest
bridge, a German division tried to make an attack on the 101st Airborne.
"But we just unloaded with artillery. The British helped, and we even had tanks firing. They were trapped, and we just
destroyed that division.
In the next few days, though, an incredible stench rose from the dead bodies at the site of the attack. "The Germans finally blew up a dike and flooded the whole area. At
least that got the smell out of there."
The 101st got a short breather at a rest camp called Mourmelon. "There was running water, toilets, beds, we thought we were in our glory." Nagell said he'd
had only one shower in the 69 days in Holland.
The respite was brief, however, when the 101st was ordered north to help defend the town of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge.
"We spent all our
time shooting and freezing. I never went in a building the whole time we were near Bastogne. I heard the officers slept in buildings, though, and had hot food. Luckily, we didn't know how good they had
it."
Nagell dug a slit trench and put evergreen branches on top. When it snowed, it insulated the trench to a certain degree. "We had no blankets, just one sleeping bag each. I must have had pretty
good circulation because I would still take my boots off at night and bring them in the sleeping bag with me."
The men slept right by their howitzers and often were called upon in the middle of the
night to get up and return an artillery volley.
The 101st was able to keep the Germans from advancing down the roads. "But then the ground froze, and they were able to take their heavy equipment right
through the woods."
At one point, a tank advanced right on Nagell's howitzer, only realizing that the artillery piece was there when they were too close to retreat. "They just stopped right there,
stuck a white flag out, and abandoned the tank. They just left it running."
Supplies mainly came in by C-47s dropping parachuted boxes of food and ammunition. One transport plane, though, got hit just
as it was about to make its drop.
"They yelled at us to get in our holes. It looked like it was going to come down right on top of our hole. We waited, and then peeked out. It had slid on its belly
down a ravine, and then turned around. We ran to get the pilots and crew off before it blew up, but it never did blow up. The crew was pretty beat up, but they were alive. We were able to get some
blankets and flashlights and other supplies off the plane."
On Christmas Day, the men saw a small parachute coming down and a fruitcake was attached to it. "I don't like fruit cake, but I sure had
some that day."
Frozen hands and feet were the worst enemies of the 101st Airborne. "Some guys just had black feet. They'd give them four or five shots of whiskey and then just saw them off. They
didn't have surgical instruments, just regular saws. The men would scream.
"I froze my fingers and toes, and years later they'd still sting like crazy sometimes when it got cold."
As the war
wore on, the 101st made its way toward Austria. Along the way they helped liberate a German prisoner camp called Dachau.
"I remember a hole that was about 100 feet by 30 feet full of bodies, men and
women, just skin and bones. It was a heck of a sight."
Nagell's unit was ordered to help some of the Dachau prisoners to a nearby town where they had a hospital. "We had to lift them up into the GMCs,
but they were so light, it was just eerie.
"Unfortunately, some of them ate too much and they just died. We didn't know any better about giving them food."
The 101st had just arrived in Austria
when the war ended. Word went out that anybody who wanted to see the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's mountain retreat, could jump on a truck and do so. Nagell thought it was a good idea.
"There was a huge
restaurant there, and I and some other guys went down a couple of levels to see what we could find. Most of the guys found whiskey and they brought it up in boxes and put it in the trucks. I went down
another level and found some metal tea pots. I got six of them, and I still have a few of them. I also got some linen, but the box was so heavy, I had to take some of it out. When I got back to the
truck, everybody wanted some of the linen, but after a while I said, 'That's enough of that.' I managed to get most of the linen home."
A week later, Nagell won a 30-day pass in a lottery. "The
officer asked me if I wanted to take it. He said I'd probably not come back to the 101st. He said I didn't have to go. I said, 'Are you bullshitting me? I think I'll go home."
A couple of weeks later,
he was in Minneapolis. After his leave, he was sent to Texas where he finished out the war.
Nagell worked in machine shops after the war and retired many years ago. His first wife died of cancer, and
27 years ago, he met Helen at a party. They have been married since, and they live in Bloomington.
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